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Sep 12, 2018 at 6:05 PMSep 19, 2018 at 9:50 AM

Dan Fogelman, best known by mainstream TV audiences as the creator-producer-writer of the hit show “This Is Us,” is not shy about putting the word writer at the top of his résumé. That’s probably because he’s been such an avid reader for so long. He admits that he reads quickly, and won’t get on a plane without at least two books in his bag. He also, after a few production assistant and researcher jobs (“The Howie Mandel Show,” “The Man Show”), broke into the business as a writer, with credits for the scripts of, among others, “Cars,” “Tangled,” and the overly punctuated “Crazy, Stupid, Love.”

Fogelman took on the job of directing a few years back with “Danny Collins,” which starred Al Pacino as an aging musician whose career might have been affected by a proposed meeting with John Lennon that didn’t happen. In between seasons of “This Is Us,” Fogelman has written and directed his second film, “Life Itself,” which features a comedic and serious and very intricate look at a couple of loosely interconnected families and the odd turns that happen to the people in them. The amiable Fogelman spoke about his crowd-pleasing funny tearjerker at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Q: You’ve admitted to going a bit biographical in past TV and film scripts. How about this one?A: Oh, sure. My mother passed away 10 years ago. We were very close, and it was a sudden thing. She died during a surgery. It was one of those body blows in my life that just took me out for about a year, and then a year later, almost to the day, I met my wife. So, as I started writing this movie, those things were in there, but I wasn’t thinking about any of them consciously. I was just kind of writing something and letting it go as I went.

Q: Without giving away anything major, what would you want potential viewers to know the film is about?A: I can only speak thematically about it. I can’t tell people the plot because the plot won’t make any sense. I would say that the world is difficult right now, and the human experience is a little bit scary and cynical. The movie captures a difficult slice of life concerning a group of people who are kind of connected. But in the end, hopefully, it will leave people feeling a little life affirmed.

Q: You preview your films a lot before they’re officially released. Are you one of those writer-directors who sneaks into the theater to watch audiences watch the movie?A: I do. I watch reactions very intensely. But I first bring people into my editing room, and grill them relentlessly. They’re family or friends or sometimes people who work for you, and they don’t always want to speak truth, but I try to push them to do it. I ask, “What did you like? What didn’t you like?” My main thing is always asking what was confusing that might have taken them out of the film. I try to problem solve all of that before I show it in a theater. But then I do sit in theaters and watch the audiences. It’s an interesting ride because in the beginning parts of the film there are house laughs like you would get in a comedy, and later there are moments where it goes pin-drop silent, with some gasps. But then you bring the audience back with some laughter. In order to do my job editorially, I feel that I have to sit in that theater, feeling it with people.

Q: One of the plot threads in this one focuses on the Bob Dylan album “Time Out of Mind.” How did that come about?A: When I started writing the script and was on page one, I put on my iTune shuffle, and “Love Sick,” the first song on “Time Out of Mind,” came on. And I kept on playing the album every time I sat back down to write more of the film. Then, just as I finished it, I was in a bookstore with my wife, and I randomly saw an anthology of Bob Dylan criticism. I opened up to that album, and the writer was really bashing the song “Time Out of Mind,” calling it the one wart on this otherwise great album. But I realized that was the film. I wanted to explore the life of a family generation that was very difficult, but they still manage view the love song in the middle of it.

Q: OK, so you had John Lennon featured in “Danny Collins, and Bob Dylan in “Life Itself.” Who will be your next movie musician?A: I’ve been long fascinated by a story about the Beatles. Just before they were going on a tour to the Netherlands in 1964, Ringo was hospitalized with tonsillitis. And a studio drummer, Jimmie Nicol, replaced him. So, for two weeks, in the midst of pandemonium, he was one of the five most famous people in the world. Then when Ringo was better, Jimmie went home, and his life took a really strange turn, because where do you go after that experience? I always thought that guy’s story would be a fascinating film. It’s always been in the back of my brain.

“Life Itself” opens on Sept. 21.

— Ed Symkus writes about movies for More Content Now. He can be reached at esymkus@rcn.com.

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